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1 Northeast Passage Bound

(Passenger)

Just one more year to go for my Bachelors’ in Mining Engineering, the school year has ended but shortly I leave on my internship.

The scheduling of this seems like a lifetime ago, father and I had set about planning my education and work experience when I entered my secondary school in my eighth year. Each summer of the four years of secondary school and the first two at the Western Australia School of Mines had been spent at the Super Pit of the Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines. This summer would be different, I would do an internship at the Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd’s Meadowbank gold mine located about 110 kilometers by road north of Baker Lake in Nunavut's Kivalliq region. The department head himself, had approached me with this opportunity, and here I thought that he had it in for me.

There had been some history here, my father and mother had sacrificed everything, along with pushing me in my academics and practical experience so that I could pull in a scholarship for a full ride. My father had spent his full life as a laborer in the mines and wished better for his only son. Both parents passed on in my last year of secondary school but not before I had won the coveted scholarship. The department head had stated publicly that he would be awarding the scholarship to a relative of his. Publicity and public opinion had returned the opportunity back to me.
Never mind I’m off the school library to access the internet and find out more about Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd’s, it’s Meadowbank Gold Mine, and Nunavut, a place I had never head of before.

Oh yes, the department head has it in for me, big time!

This has been a busy week of travel as I arrive for my internship with Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd. I will be spending my two months of summer break at the Meadowbank Mine, Some summer, December and January just won’t feel right where I am going. The Meadowbank Mine is an open pit mine and my experience there will build on my learning of the past years at home.

Meadowbank open pit gold mine and concentrator

As a journey this has been quite a jaunt. I left Kalgoorlie on Transwa’s Prospector. The high speed train is the most sophisticated service in country and traveling at velocities up to 160 km/h it completed the trip to Perth in less than seven hours. Not bad for a distance of 653 kilometers. I transferred to a cab for the trip to the airport where I dropped $au 1850 on Qantas for my flight to Calgary. I spent the night in a Guildford hotel. The next day the shuttle bus transported me to the international terminal from which I boarded my flight to San Francisco, fourteen hours, followed by a two hour layover and a two and a half hour flight on Sky West, they called it United Express. If I had made a recording of my trip it might be called Planes, Trains, Buses and Automobile. Another shuttle bus and two nights in a hotel brought my body back in line time wise.

I wait in the departure lounge at the airport, In front of me is the most beautiful airplane I have ever seen, made by Beachcraft it resembles nothing I have ever seen. My guide and companion, for my trip to the airstrip 935 km North East of Yellowknife, informed me that this craft is called a Starship and was designed by Dick Rutan. Appropriately, it looks like a dream of the future. Better yet, is the news I will be riding in it, as it is the company plane we have been waiting for.

Beechcraft Starship in flight

As we lift off I watch the lights disappear in darkness, we turn towards Yellowknife and points North East, our destination the town of Qamanittuaq. In what remains of the sun’s illumination I see ahead clouds reminiscent of the tropical cyclones and typhoons of the south Pacific. The pilot noting my concern explained that this craft was very tolerant of air turbulence. Indeed, she stated that this would be the most comfortable ride I would ever have.

How prophetic.

As I clenched the safety harness tighter around my chest I again reached for the nearest biohazard marked rejected nourishment repository, a white paper and plastic bag with built in tie wrap allowing the top to fold down and with reasonable certitude of retaining a semi liquid mixture of acids and a partially digested meal of just two hours past. The meal you ask, fish and chips, Friday after all you know. Back on the campus the end of the school week would be a chance to relax and perhaps a bit of hell rising in the bars in town. Unlike the hell rising of my friends and fellow students, tonight is more than just a little bit of hell.

A storm had come upon us quickly, with a ferocity that suggested of an unlikely tropical nature which should not be found in the land of semiannual darkness below. Indeed for the citizens of Canada on these northern coastal shores the sun had set a full month ago and would not be seen for another handful of months.

As we had headed Northeast out of Calgary we had stayed high in the atmosphere, now past Yellowknife our flight was at first was quiet and smooth. In the winter time there are no thunderstorms up here, this statement the captain maintained as he peppered his remarks with expletives’ that I can no longer replicate. Our man made bird of carbon fiber and metal let forth screams of mortal pain as the forces of nature played with us as if we were but a shuttlecock. With finality that spoke of our need to make peace with our maker the fuselage was rent asunder.